"Kids need to know how scientists work, so my students spend time observing, drawing, and using tools such as magnifying lenses, viewing boxes and microscopes to extend their senses," reports teacher Libby Rhoden from Pasadena, TX. Their current focus? The insects in and around the milkweed bushes they planted to nourish butterfly larvae.

"As I reviewed my mix of incoming fifth graders representing a wide range of motivation levels and abilities, I struggled to figure out how best to meet their diverse needs," says Junia Norris from Whitefield, ME. A collaborative garden project, she mused, might just draw on students' talents and interests and address state teaching and learning goals.

When middle-school students in Greenwood, AR, set out to create a schoolyard habitat and outdoor classroom, they knew four habitat components were essential: food, water, shelter, and places to raise young. But with no water source in sight, their vision could have dried right up.

To solve their problem, the young stewards decided to create their own pond, bog, and waterfall. A donated liner, a submersible pump, lots of elbow grease, and a gift of rocks from a contractor helped bring their 3,000-gallon pond to fruition.

When Kathy Miller's first through fifth graders in Greenville, SC, set out on a spring safari, they were hunting for evidence of animal life in their school garden.

"One of the first sightings my students made were the thousands of ladybugs that seemed to flock to certain garden plants, such as sedum and rudbeckia," reports Kathy. Her keen observers readily hooked by these endearing garden residents, Kathy began a yearlong study of the complex dramas that unfold in a schoolyard ecosystem.

"Too often children are asked to save the whales, the rainforest, the Earth," says habitat educator Judith Levicoff from the Philadelphia area. "Although they're all important issues, they are overwhelming concepts to a child. Children live in the moment and need immediate results for their efforts. Butterfly gardens are a way that kids of all ages can think globally and act locally."

Wildflowers in a can would be the last thing a group of fourth graders in Clinton, WI, would plant in their schoolyard. They've set their sights on the return of the natives, the tallgrass prairies, that, says teacher Kim Lowman Vollmer, are more endangered than the rainforest.